


In obscuritas

by b_minako



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-08
Updated: 2019-04-08
Packaged: 2020-01-06 17:56:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18393446
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/b_minako/pseuds/b_minako
Summary: What the girl in question is actually thinking, and where, is something her searchers might not imagine.Set after Buffy's S7 ep. 22 "Chosen" and Angel's S4 ep. 20 "The Girl in Question".





	In obscuritas

She is tired. She thinks there must be ages since she hasn’t performed a truly superficial act, one of those silly rumblings a girl of her time should have been doing for a while, like eating ice cream after a break up, shopping unnecessary things or just walking aimlessly along the streets of Dublin in dire need of affection. This is exactly what she is doing now and, Buffy ponders, it feels horrible.

She doesn’t know how to not being useful. Sounds pretentious but in the end it’s the real thing: she could be the last unique Slayer and the dozens of girls back in the Academy could not entirely need her in the literal sense of the word. At some point it’s a good feeling; she doesn’t have tomorrow’s weight on her shoulders while at the same time the only thing she knows how to do is carrying that load.

There were two other times in her life – Buffy says almost aloud, one hand making a curious sign to the guy in the bicycle coming across her to move forward – when she felt in a similar state: when she was hideously resurrected and when she was equally hideously sad after killing Angel.

The name is every time a pang in her chest. She can almost feel it, brings a hand to her chest near the clavicle in the place where the cross used to be, puts a little pressure there so the emptiness of him being out of reach is not everything she feels. Years ago she read that a relationship that comes and goes as much as theirs has, could end up with both partners, and while she has been fed up of the cuts and the blood and the never ending pain that entails hearing from his voice that they should not be together, the hope never entirely wears out. Buffy wonders who is actually cursed; him, with his volatile soul threatening to disappear at the mention of happiness or her, with her unkillable and titanic love.

Someone offers apples in front of her. They glimmer lightly in the sunlight, full of red, red as the blood they shared, Buffy thinks, red as that old legend about soul mates (the word is almost comical) linked by a string around their little fingers. It’s a clisé story told to kids in order to keep them falling in love, but what if you have fallen and you have never really gotten up?

She has time now, not in a vampiric sense, but time in the human interpretation of not being pulled by the Big Bad Guy of the year. There is the Academy, yeah, there are a couple of demons to fight around the world, there is the mystery behind that crater that used to be her home, the understanding of her questionable time with Spike, the little sister who deserves a better life and the millions of classes, books, movies, superficial and inconspicuous things she could do to fill the time, to buy more seconds, minutes, hours and years so she finish baking but… she stops in front a window, mirroring her reflection.  
Maybe time, Buffy thinks, is what is making her remember at every moment Angel’s arm around her waist, Angel’s voice difficult to grasp, always a little fragile and rusty, as if there’s no intention of stay in the air; Angel’s cold fingers grazing her nape and the way he appears and disappears in no more than a heartbeat, which he doesn’t have, but she does (oh she does). At first she thought the fact that she could feel him practically wherever they were was one more feature in the Slayer’s weapons to fight the evil (you have to know where the enemy is in order to confront it), but soon enough Buffy realized it was Angel (and therefore Angelus) who she perceived in the same way one’s detects the breathing: invisible, but constant and painful if it’s not in its place. So LA was far but never that far. Rome, Ireland, Sunnydale, even the heaven, of what she believed it could have been heaven, were places she and him could go up and about and still be maddening connected in a fairytalesque fashion. 

“I ain't gettin' any older”, he had said.

Buffy arrives the little market Willow has talked about in her emails, unsurprisingly full of people and alive in a joyful way her boredom now despises. She blends with the costumers until she blends no more and hurries to a side of the street where there are more bicycles and some kids play with a yellow ball. 

The last time she saw Angel was prior to the final battle in Sunnydale. After the First’s fall, the gang went to LA for a small bit of time but she purposely avoided the vampire because it was all too loud and fresh in front of her. There was simply too much to do. They talked over the phone and he made a point booking a room for her and the survivors but then again didn’t visit her, something she actually thanked. She would have crumbled in tears at the mere sight of him at the door-frame and tears were not allowed without a plan to follow. Also, there was the Spike thing (she couldn’t really explain it to herself and certainly failed at explaining it to Angel) and the consequent sadness of losing him, even when months later – she has been told – the witty vampire reappeared in Angel’s headquarters, ironies apart. She was glad for him, for Spike that is, and much gladder for herself since that event implied what she crazily needed to do: run away.

She walks that narrow passage with the distraction of someone who wanders. At the end there is some light and music, and maybe a few more customers making shopping, laughing and rising their voices. 

Before the aniquilation of Sunnydale she had met Angel, but for the shortest time. She wondered how much he remembered of that peculiar meeting. She certainly recalled the entire day – it was a day and its night – and the reason was Angel had asked her to meet in some chalky midpoint, at a motel, between LA and her town. Buffy agreed since she considered important to see him in a horrific intent of getting herself connected to life again. She had climb out from her coffin several days ago and nobody, nothing, no word or no place had been capable to wash the pain away. Angel might have succeeded in that. He was, however, distraught; at first sight more than Buffy. Her death had changed something fundamental in him and was tearing his (un)life apart: the fact that he survived her for a couple of months had shown him the naked core of his fears, the duplicity of their existences. Buffy didn’t deny this but still was severely confused. Angel then had pulled a small piece of paper from his pocket; an incantation to restore my soul he had said, in case I lose it again, he had explained, because I won’t accept a minute of this new life you have without feeling you underneath me, alive, warm, completed. 

He was mistaken, but Buffy didn’t have the heart to say it aloud. And she didn’t care anymore the whole perfect bliss affaire since her hell was also perfect down the earth and nobody seemed to notice that.

Why was that Angel didn’t notice? It was all too fast, Buffy admits. One minute they were kissing like a storm would explode inside the room and the next thing was Angelus, chained to the bed by one wrist in a silly preventive measure that fooled nobody. Buffy have doubted but it was late. It was always late to quit loving him.

He had gone mad when she named him Angel that time. He had taken her hands up in an even more violent thrust and pound into her with unsolicitous strength, drawing actual pain mixed with acidic pleasure, and while coldly grabbing her he had whispered, lips to lips, – as if he were giving her life through his death – “Angelus”. She should have known but the name slipped by force of habit and, also, as a silent reassurance of that other half still there, ready to return to her, ready to end the nightmare of lusting after a demon. “I’m always, at any time, a demon, Lover”, he mentioned, “You just choose to look away from that”. 

It was true. Yet Angelus, as much as his perception and reading upon her was excellent, could not see that she actually longed for that encounter; the Slayer inside yelled her body and her mind for an opportunity to free herself and experience the extension of her love. She knew she was screwed the moment she meet him because that firely kiss had sealed the fact that, souled or not, she would have given the world for him. If the spell didn’t work in the end or if he finally ripped her throat while fucking her to the climax, she couldn’t care less. Buffy begged him to drink her, one, two, many times and revelled in his offer of tasting him in return. “I don’t want to be a vampire”. “It’s gonna take more than a few drops, Buff, but consider it a free sample of darkness”. He stated that she needed that kind of shadow and she thought he was right at that time since the resurrection had messed up with her head completely. So of course she was gonna feel that impossible desire, all those dark intentions, the whole I would risk the world for you since what could possibly be worse?  
The morning after, in fact.  
She cast the spell at the end of the night (it was actually dawn and Angelus had made several comments about starting “his” night sliding again into her body) and was surprised by the lack of resistance from his part. For a second a ridiculous thought had crossed her mind: what if Angel is putting a show for her, what if he is letting her believe he had a blissful moment after seeing her again, got back into Angelus as a proof, when actually he had experienced none? What if Angel, as Angel in memories and words, and touches and deadly kisses has heard and seen every dark corner of her stark need? What if he knew now that she, the Slayer, the Chosen one, didn’t want to live anymore, didn’t want to give up their love anymore, didn’t want to do the things Angel was fighting for?

If he saw that, he never said it aloud. Buffy cast the spell, Angelus returned to be caged with the restoring of Angel’s soul and they parted, less reluctantly than they would have guessed, as if they were two strangers who screamed, and fought and kissed in an alley and secretly promised never forming words on the matter, never entirely acknowledge that grim reunion.

The light she chased turned out to be a garland made of multicolor bulbs at the front part of a bakery. Buffy finds that very cute and appealing. The smell is delicious. What was it? 

“Cookies, miss?”, a young boy offers. “Fresh baked cookies?”

She chuckles, accepts the little plastic bag half-heartedly.

This is a weird coincidence. 

Still, after paying the kid and sit at the door she entertains a funny thought. Guided by impulse and by a violent heartbeat she pulls out her cellphone, snaps a picture and sends it to Angel. They haven’t spoken since LA. She heard he has a girlfriend now. She heard many things, and feels the connection all the more bruised and throbbing. 

Willing to return the apartment, her phone rings. It must be 4 am in Los Angeles.

Buffy stares at the name on the screen 

You have to know what to do with the flame once you have started the fire.

**Author's Note:**

> My first work and also written in a foreign language. I would appreciate very much any comment or critic. Hope you have enjoyed.


End file.
